


I Burn, I Pine

by Fiercest



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Fluff, PG smut?, but like steamy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 03:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10982154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiercest/pseuds/Fiercest
Summary: Ichigo sees Rukia for the woman that she is."His shirt is torn at the collar, open and askew. He’s too warm and too cold all at once. His belt is lost to the dust bunnies under his bed."





	I Burn, I Pine

His shirt is torn at the collar, open and askew. He’s too warm and too cold all at once. His belt is lost to the dust bunnies under his bed. 

There is a woman who has flung herself halfway across the room, as if her hands were singed where they touched him. They haven’t moved in a momentary eternity and yet she’s panting like she’ll never breathe properly again. They’ve barely done anything.

The woman is short and stacked with muscles. Lean and ropey. They suit her. She fights like a dancer, moves through the air like she’s swimming. She should have muscles like a swimmer. He’s thought about it a lot and honestly, the reality lines up with his daydreams nicely.

She’s a contradictory woman. She’s separated herself from him by a physical chasm of an entire six goddamn feet. (Doesn’t she know that that’s basically a felony?) She’s modest and yet, she holds herself with grace and confidence in a way that only she can accomplish basically naked.

She’s impossible and insane and infuriating and she’s everything he’s ever wanted.

 

* * *

 

They call her girl a lot.

Everyone does.

She doesn’t know if it’s a chauvinism thing, her own naïve countenance or what, but she’s always referred to as ‘the girl’.

“ _Girl_ , come here.”

 “She’s a sweet _girl_.”

 “That _girl’s_ got a temper on her.”

“That _girl_ twisted my arm behind my back and broke it!”

 Things like that.

She knows what she is. She knows who she is. And when she looks in the mirror she sees a girl who, as a child, went days without eating and buried friends who couldn’t withstand it the same. She wonders how Renji got to be so big, but she supposes that whatever brain power he might have had got diverted to his muscles instead.

She’s fine with the way she looks, mostly.

But she’s on the cusp of 300 years old and is still being treated like a child. If someone were to ask her, she’d lie and say that’s why she’s so loud: to fill up the space that she can’t with her body. Just to make them feel back.

Men make it difficult.

She’s had men cringe backward, say they just don’t _see her that way_ because the thought of physicality with someone they can’t help but view as child-like is repulsive. They pat her on the head instead of kissing her goodnight and for reasons she cannot articulate, she feels dirty.

Worse are the men who infantilize her and treat her stature as a fetish. She bloodies their noses and makes them cower with a glare when they pass her in the street.

 

* * *

 

But Ichigo makes her feel beautiful. From the moment they met, he’d treated her with respect. From the day, he’d stared at her with fury and awe and never feared that breathing in her direction would break her. 

Early in their relationship, she was the one in control. She was the teacher. She had the power (figuratively speaking, since he literally had the power).

She used to think of him as a human boy. Sometime along the way that changed.

The man lying on the bed, staring at her with wide, wide eyes is entirely a man. She cannot be at all mistaken in how he sees her.

He makes her feel so beautiful, sexy and wanted. He sees her for every hard thing that she is. He knows her hardships, her scars. He sees her exactly as she is. 

Looking at him, with gleaming eyes full of mischief and a mouth open in dumbstruck awe-

She wants him.


End file.
